This post is part of Luis Matos Code Snippets’ Xamarin Month

In the early days of Xamarin Forms, if you wanted to use a platform-specific feature of a page or a view, you’d have to write a custom renderer.

Later came effects, which were a little less painful.

But the game-changer was when Microsoft decided to build-in common platform-specific features, right into the XAML, so that you could turn on a platforms-specific feature for one platform only, with the directive being ignored for others.

The canonical example in my mind is telling iOS to use the Safe Area, depending on the specific phone, so parts of your UI are not cut off on certain phones. But here is the thing: I can never remember the magical incantation you use to do that. I have to google Xamarin ios safe area every time. There has to be a better way.

             xmlns:ios="clr-namespace:Xamarin.Forms.PlatformConfiguration.iOSSpecific;assembly=Xamarin.Forms.Core"
             ios:Page.UseSafeArea="true"

Of course there is - a Code Snippet. Now all I have to remember is psios to include the namespace and then pssa to include the safe-area platform specific … I type the snippet, and hit tab, and bingo, the iOS Platform-specific XAML is entered into the editor (ios:Page.UseSafeArea="true" in case you were wondering).

No more googling. In that spirit I’ve defined a whole slew of snippets for these platform-specifics, including one to import the ios namespace used in the pssa snippet.

The snippet file is here. To use it go to Tools->Code Snippets Manager and hit Import and import this file. Here are some of the Snippets I’ve defined

Shortcut Explanation
psios Snippet to bring in the iOS namespace for platform specific code
pssa Snippet for a iOS safe area
psnpbs Hide NavigationPage Bar Separator on iOS
psmdps Apply MasterDetailPage Shadow on iOS
pslpt Show Large Page Titles on iOS
pshpi Show Home Indicator Visibility on iOS
pspsv Set Page Status Bar Visibility on iOS

There are a lot more platform-specifics than these, and of course they are available for Android too. If I find myself typing them more than once, I’ll create a snippet.

But really, if you find yourself typing the same thing over and over, do yourself a favor and define some snippets. It’s why you became a programmer in the first place, remember? Make the computer do the easy stuff for you, and you can focus on the hard stuff.